


Perhaps A Child

by rillani



Category: Avendar (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Gen, Loss of Parent(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 16:24:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17083724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillani/pseuds/rillani
Summary: Eonqa Niopfiq's character background





	Perhaps A Child

Perhaps I was to be a sacrifice, perhaps a slave. I do know I was surrounded. I remember their black-robed backs to me. I remember the burst of light between their shadowy forms as a ch'taren grew into a spirit of eye-piercing brightness. The berobed ones encircled me, closing in, their weapons raised.. but not at me. Their staves and swords were pointed outward. That, I remember.

I was found beneath the docks of Gaald by an ethron merchant, Sapf Niopfiq. An early-morning rain had washed the blood from the docks, but the citizens murmured of a great battle the night before. A victory for the light. I had been rescued.

Sapf took me to her family in Qilarn. The clan raised me. I cooked and cleaned and hunted as any other ethron child. Yet, I was apart. I am human, and worse still.

That night on the Gaald docks--the night of my 'rescue'--the ch'taren peered deeply into my heart. She did not like what she saw. An argument erupted between her and her companions. Before they came to a resolution, the stalwart band was called away to some new emergency. They left me to sit among the corpses. I was not yet five.

A little tradition among the Niopfiq family is to crown a ten-year-old upon their birthday with the heirloom gleaming helm, an old treasure from a goodly ancestor. It stung me.

That night of blood, the ch'taren gleamed brighter than any armor. I saw her light reflected on a dark warrior's blade as the weapon spun through the air and clattered to the docks. She cracked the blade in twain, and a demon poured forth. It paid her no heed, but leapt for the dark warrior. The warrior fell. The robed ones tried to flee, but they, too, fell. 

The clan storyteller told me of Kyana. The goddess cried for the pain of the world, and her prescient tears became the stars. I thought, how beautiful the sky must have been before.

Before I crawled beneath the docks, before I hid beneath the red-dripping planks, I sat among the corpses. The dark warrior lay stilled by death. Through tears, I gazed upon her face. I remember this, though I have told none: red hair curled out from beneath her helm, and she had freckles like mine.

Perhaps I was to be a child.


End file.
